This list holds 3,876 words, 2.2% of the 172,634 words this site keeps from the ENABLE word list. Every word here has 5 letters, and they average 5 letters by construction — so the interesting differences are in which letters they use. Of the 36 lists in this group it is the biggest; the next is “5 letter words with A” with 3,490, and the smallest is “5 letter words ending in UMPY” with 5. 5 words that would also fit were left out by this site's blocklist of slurs and explicit words.

Points and vowels

Using this site's letter values, the average word here scores 9.2 points (median 9); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 0.4 points leaner. The top scorers are LEZZY (23), JEMMY (21), JERKY (21), JIVEY (21). Point for point, LEZZY earns the most per letter: 23 points over 5 letters, 4.6 each. E itself is worth 1 point here, so the score comes from the other letters.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 40.8% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 564 words are more than half vowels. Compared with the whole dictionary, the letter most over-represented here is W: 1.6% of the letters, against 0.7% overall.

Letter by letter

E opens 192 words (5%), closes 727 and sits inside the other 2,957. 557 words use it more than once, such as ABELE, ACKEE, ADEEM and AEDES. Position by position, the most likely letters are S in slot 1 (10.4%), E in slot 2 (27.4%), E in slot 3 (14.6%), E in slot 4 (43.9%), S in slot 5 (25.9%). 2,707 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (69.8%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is EE (205 words). The most common three-letter openings are LEA- (19, as in LEACH), STE- (19, as in STEAD), SHE- (18, as in SHEAF). The most common endings are -RES (49, as in ACRES), -LES (47, as in ABLES), -NES (46, as in ACNES). 25.7% end in a single S — mostly plurals and verb forms of shorter words.

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is APERS, APRES, ASPER, PARES, PARSE, PEARS, PRASE and 5 more — 12 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 761 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 2,105 words. It contains 10 palindromes, read the same both ways: DEKED, DELED, DEWED, LEVEL, REFER and SEMES. 92 words turn into another real word when spelled backwards — AIDER becomes REDIA, ANGER becomes REGNA, CARES becomes SERAC, DEBUT becomes TUBED. BECKS is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel, ahead of BEDEL.

49.6% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (ABASE, ABATE and ABBES among them); after S, the most useful end letter is D, which extends 436 words. At the front, S turns 248 words into new ones (ABLES → SABLES); P turns 119 words into new ones (ADDED → PADDED); C turns 116 words into new ones (ABLES → CABLES).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, AEDES is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the sampled words into 87 groups, the largest of which has 76 words left (5.2 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “contains E, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.

More lists like this

About these lists. Words come from ENABLE, a public-domain word list; a few slurs and explicit words are left out. Letter values are this site's own rule, based on how rare each letter is. Scrabble, Words With Friends and Wordle are trademarks of their owners (Hasbro and Mattel, Zynga, The New York Times); this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Sources and limits.